Dave, my Betamax conked out in 1987 and at the time there were no laser discs yet. Do you really think I could have managed 7-8 years without a Leone movie at home....??

There were LDs for commercial use as early as 1978. As this info from wikipedia makes clear, 1987 was *the* year to adopt the format:

Quote

As Pioneer introduced Digital Audio to LaserDisc in 1985, they further refined the CAA format. CAA55 was introduced in 1985 with a total playback capacity of 55 minutes 5 seconds, and was necessary to resolve technical issues with the inclusion of Digital Audio. Several titles released between 1985 and 1987 were analog audio only due to the length of the title and the desire to keep the film on 1 disc (e.g., "Back to the Future"). By 1987, Pioneer had overcome the technical challenges and was able to once again encode in CAA60—allowing a total of 60 minutes, 5 seconds.

Ya measly skunk! A-campin’ on my trail and lettin’ me do the work an’ then shootin’ me in the back. IN THE BACK!

when I was a kid I actually memorized these films so I could tell my cousins about them, I figured they'd never get on TV.

Yeah, what do the younger generations know about this? I actually remember reciting a movie for my school companions (it was an english horror) and keep them entranced (maybe I was good at it. Or maybe it was a good movie: there's a lot of them when you're a teen. Then they become rarer).

Anyway I find strange that you say you never thought they would end up on tv. By reading some reviews on IMDB or Amazon I reckon the movies made it on tv in the '70's, while in Italy we had to wait 1989, when VCR was established in Italy. And you thought this for a special reason or because that was what happened to movies on tv in general?

The networks rarely showed Leone's films. With the rise of regional stations, and then cable, Leone got more exposure. I saw a lot of the films in the early 80s, when a local station had regular Leone weeks. A friend of mine got to know OUATITW well after it got on regular rotation on Turner in the mid to late 80s.

Ya measly skunk! A-campin’ on my trail and lettin’ me do the work an’ then shootin’ me in the back. IN THE BACK!

Nowadays, the Dollars Trilogy is shown on AMC, every once in a while, usually on stuff like "Clint Eastwood Weekend" and "Tough Guy Week". They're heavily cut most of the time, I wish they'd play them on TCM. Actually, the cuts for FoD and FaFDM are reasonably thorough, but GBU is horrible. One moment he doesn't have his serape, the next he does.

Well I though that they wouldn't make it to TV in an uncut state mostly because of the violence and subject matter.

Between 1970 and 1977 I rarely watched TV I was out in The Idaho Panhandle North of the Locsa River and East of Kamiai & Pierce and in the Yaak River Valley of Northwestern Montana both areas without TV reception. But someplace I saw the network premier of Fistful of Dollars and realized that some weird censorship is possible in the USA.

"When you feel that rope tighten on your neck you can feel the devil bite your ass"!

Well I though that they wouldn't make it to TV in an uncut state mostly because of the violence and subject matter.

Between 1970 and 1977 I rarely watched TV I was out in The Idaho Panhandle North of the Locsa River and East of Kamiai & Pierce and in the Yaak River Valley of Northwestern Montana both areas without TV reception. But someplace I saw the network premier of Fistful of Dollars and realized that some weird censorship is possible in the USA.

Fod isn't that bad, no sex, no blood, just a good western. That might be able to be seen uncut on TV.